Archive for the ‘nations’ tag

If you were to talk to a group of North Americans who support the fight for Negroes' rights, would you not be surprised to learn that even they often regard Negroes as second-rate humans? Nowadays everybody knows that there are no essential differences in the functioning of the muscles and internal organs. So the proponents of racist doctrine allege that the main difference lies in the mental sphere, i. e. in the functioning of the brain.

Such views stem from the great difference in the level of cultural development that existed between different nations some three or four centuries ago in the epoch of great geographical discoveries and which even nowadays have not yet been completely smoothed out. Many outstanding personalities have come from Asia, Africa, North and South America, and Australia, but the overall contribution of many nations to the progress of human civilization still remains negligible. The living conditions of these nations are certainly responsible for this rather than any innate inferiority. The racialists, however, claim that the different levels of cultural development prove the inferiority of non-Europeans.

Are there any real differences in the work of the brain in different human races? The basic difference between the activity of the brain in man and animals is the use of speech, which Ivan Pavlov called the second signalling system. Speech is a purely human phenomenon, and racial differences, if any, will be manifested in the brain mechanisms of speech.